Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/60/)
I was planning to ride off into the sunset today, but if I may appropriate an observation by Benjamin Franklin, it looks as though I might be heading in the direction of the rising sun.
In the week since I announced that Last Best News would cease publication today, I have heard so many expressions of interest in reviving it in some shape or form, with or without my continued involvement, that it appears likely that this independent online newspaper will live on.
As a young man, I remember seeing highway signs in the South that said, “Warning, Speed Trap Ahead.”
These were not put up by the highway departments. They were paid for by the American Automobile Association. Typically, and quite legally, the speed limit would suddenly change from 60 to 25. Continue Reading →
Montana has another online news site started by a former daily newspaper reporter.
The Electric, dedicated to covering the city of Great Falls and Malmstrom Air Base, was launched in early May by Jenn Rowell, who was laid off by the Gannet-owned Great Falls Tribune last October. Continue Reading →
I enjoyed some time recently with an old friend who shared memories and photographs of her early childhood on a scratch-gravel South Dakota farm before it even had electricity. The photos in particular elicited powerful memories of my own.
I was too young to remember when electricity was installed at my family’s summer place in the mid-1950s. I do recall the day when the much-anticipated telephone service arrived to Hail Columbia Gulch. Continue Reading →
After six months on the job, it’s about time Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton started doing his job.
Among the duties of the secretary of state, surely one of the most important is to ensure that Montana elections are conducted fairly and that votes are counted accurately. A good secretary of state would do everything in his power to accomplish those goals. Continue Reading →
It’s a time of jarring incongruity. Outdoors, trees shiver in the summer heat. Dew dries at dawn. Everything is ripe and wilting.
Indoors, vitriol and inanity drip from the airwaves as journalists breathlessly report the latest in the limbo contest that now passes for leadership in our nation’s capital. Continue Reading →
The new owners of the Montana Avenue building that houses the Charitable Works Office of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul plan to start renovating the three-story structure as soon as St. Vincent moves out.
Vicki Massie, volunteer coordinator for St. Vincent de Paul, which has been without a director since Ed Zabrocki resigned in January, said the charity office should be in its new building south of the railroad tracks by the end of July. (See related story.) Continue Reading →
The move of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul charity office and thrift store to a new building south of the railroad tracks began about three years.
Ernie Dutton, who had done some volunteer work for St. Vincent de Paul, was coming out of a Rotary meeting at what is now the DoubleTree by Hilton and decided to walk across Montana Avenue to the charity office. Continue Reading →
If you are among the dwindling few who still believe journalism is an honorable profession, proceed with caution. Continue Reading →
It took about an hour into a 90-minute public forum, but candidates for Billings mayor finally found things to disagree about on Tuesday.
Four of six candidates for mayor appeared at the forum, which was sponsored by the Yellowstone Democratic Club. Angela Cimmino and Danny Sandefur were unable to attend, forum organizers said, and a seventh candidate, Paul Bledsoe, has dropped out of the race. Continue Reading →
It was a close call for one family camped at Lake Alva this past weekend when a mature pine crashed down on the fifth-wheel trailer where a baby was sleeping, nearly splitting the vehicle in two.
The incident was reported to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department on Friday evening, shortly after a powerful storm pushed through the Seeley-Swan Valley. Continue Reading →
